![Ian Fleming on the beach near GoldenEye, Jamaica, in 1964](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/women/2017/03/15/GettyImages-80142743_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqsdRs33wD1XOTq6YMtAuPE23LOS71A_na2_FxP0eFQ10.jpg?imwidth=680)
From Ian Fleming to Ann Cleeves: Desert Island Discs' best crime writer castaways
![Ian Fleming on the beach near GoldenEye, Jamaica, in 1964](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/women/2017/03/15/GettyImages-80142743_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqsdRs33wD1XOTq6YMtAuPE23LOS71A_na2_FxP0eFQ10.jpg?imwidth=680)
The crime novelist Ann Cleeves is the latest castaway on the nation’s favourite radio programme, Desert Island Discs. Many crime and thriller writers have appeared on the show over the years to reveal what book, luxury item and eight records they would want to console them if they found themselves stranded on a desert island, from Ian Fleming to Martina Cole, via Patricias Highsmith and Cornwell. Here is a selection of the best.
Ian Fleming (1963)
Sadly only a few minutes survive of this edition featuring the creator of James Bond, so we no longer know what prompted him to choose Rosemary Clooney singing This Ole House or the zither music from The Third Man. But we can hear the old smoothie reminiscing about his days at Eton (“I’m afraid I wasn’t terribly good at my books”) and telling Roy Plomley how he created Bond: “I was just on the edge of getting married and I was frenzied at the prospect of this great step in my life after having been a bachelor for so long, and I really wanted to take my mind off the agony, so I decided to sit down and write a book.” Listen here
Len Deighton (1976)
The author of The IPCRESS File explains that his creation of a very un-Bond-like working-class spy was inspired by his being the sole non-Etonian on the board of the advertising agency where he worked: “The IPCRESS File is about spies on the surface but it’s also really about a grammar school boy among public school boys and the difficulties he faces.” Still many years away from his long retirement from writing, Deighton doesn’t sound that enthusiastic about the job: “The best thing about writing books is being at a party and telling some pretty girl you write books, the worst thing is sitting at a typewriter and actually writing the book.” Listen here
Patricia Highsmith (1979)
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Any interview with the reclusive genius of American crime fiction - one of the few castaways who seems to actually relish the prospect of isolation on the famous island - is precious. But one can’t help wishing that Kirsty Young could have been let loose on the author of The Talented Mr Ripley and Strangers on a Train rather than the avuncular Roy Plomley. The reticent Highsmith gives superficial answers to questions about her fondness for anti-heroes, her penchant for keeping snails as pets, or the reason she published The Price of Salt (aka Carol) under a pseudonym. But then, it is very Highsmithian that more should be going on under the surface than is readily apparent.
Ed McBain (1979)
The author of the 87th Precinct novels explains that he sets his books in an imaginary city so that he doesn’t have to keep up to date with procedural detail (“the police in New York change their routines as often as they change their underwear”), and immodestly chooses one of his own novels as his Desert Island book. Appropriately for a crime writer, his musical choices include Bobbie Gentry’s mysterious Ode to Billie Joe, and quite a few “discordant, strident, violent” classical choices - “There’s a lot in Messiaen that sounds like a scream for help, and this excites me when I listen to it.” Listen here
P. D. James (1982 and 2002)
![PD James in 2009](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/radio/2019/02/18/TELEMMGLPICT000006238865_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqe2gUmjRsyy_1k97WQihbV-uGVr62FBJmMRnNXr04hMw.jpeg?imwidth=350)
One of the great queens of crime, the creator of Commander Adam Dalgliesh, is one of the few people to have been cast away twice on the desert island: first with Roy Plomley in 1982 and then with Sue Lawley 20 years later. The two programmes are a good illustration of the presenters’ different interviewing styles. Amateur psychologist Lawley probes James about the mental illness and death of her husband and whether she turned to writing as therapy, while patrician Plomley’s questions include, “You’re doing exceedingly well - have you been tempted to go into tax exile?” Listen here
Julian Symons (1982)
The prolific crime writer and critic, now enjoying something of a renaissance with the republication of his classic books The Colour of Murder and The Belting Inheritance, explains how George Orwell secured him his first job in literary journalism, reveals why his first book was published by a pornography specialist, and describes the macabre initiation ritual, involving a human skull, that is required of new members of the crime writers’ dining society the Detection Club. Symons and Roy Plomley - who sound as if they’re being played by John Gielgud and Noel Coward - have the most civilised argument imaginable about whether thrillers can be serious literature. Listen here
Colin Dexter (1998)
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The creator of Inspector Morse ponders the similarities and differences between himself and his famous character, reveals what he thinks is Morse’s worst failing (meanness with money), explains why his brother thinks he’s the greatest writer in the world (because he writes the shortest chapters) and tallies the number of Oxford residents he has killed off in the course of his books (75). Morse would approve of Dexter’s selections from Fauré, Mozart and Wagner, but perhaps not the Beatles… Listen here
Minette Walters (2002)
The woman behind such memorable chillers as The Ice House, The Sculptress and The Scold’s Bridle chooses tracks ranging from Beethoven to Queen and Monty Python while trying to account for the popularity of her books. Of crime readers she says: “We like that frisson of horror, but we like the confirmation of our own humanity at the end, when we can say: I could never have done that. And generally we are all right when we say that.” On being asked why she writes so much about middle-class characters, she replies: “it’s because the middle class always try to hide their secrets”; the crime writer’s job is to “pull the net curtains so people can look in.” Listen here
Patricia Cornwell (2002)
![Patricia Cornwell in 2014](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/women/2017/02/24/PatriciaCornwell_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqN-IJhLaQEeagjjxwYxbEQkhg39-7cKkM9yxusTYYcOw.jpg?imwidth=350)
The multi-million-selling creator of Kay Scarpetta must be one of the few castaways to have turned up to the Desert Island Discs studio with a bodyguard in tow to protect her from stalkers and murderers. The schoolmarmish Sue Lawley is not impressed, asking bluntly: “you don’t think, because you’ve written about so many depraved and psychotic people, that you’ve just scared yourself to death?” But Cornwell is adamant that she needs to be protected from suffering the same grisly fates as some of her characters: “I don’t say it can’t happen to me, because it can, but it won’t because I’m careful.” Listen here
Alexander McCall Smith (2005)
The author of The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency tries to account for the phenomenal success of his gentle mysteries: “I think that people rather like reading about good people … It is a very distressing world in which we live, and if people can go somewhere, through a book, where certain values that they would like to believe in are given form and applied, they feel strengthened and encouraged.”
“You are these women, are you not - they are your alter egos?” asks Sue Lawley, when discussing his fictional sleuths Precious Ramotswe and Isabel Dalhousie. “Well, I suppose, if we keep this confidential - yes,” comes the reply. Listen here
Ian Rankin (2006)
The begetter of DI John Rebus reminisces about his earliest attempts at writing, kept secret from his working-class family in Fife - they only found out when they read in the local paper that he’d come second in a poetry competition. Many of Rebus’s favourite artists, including The Rolling Stones, Jackie Leven and John Martyn, are included among Rankin’s choices. But, as Rankin says, there are more differences than similarities between him and Rebus: “He would find me a wishy-washy liberal … There’s something of the Old Testament about him, he sees the world in black and white, and my job in the books is often to try and change his mind about this and show him that there are elements of grey.” Listen here
Anthony Horowitz (2006)
Kirsty Young talks to the crime novelist, prolific author of thrillers for teenagers, and creator of the TV shows Midsomer Murders - which he describes as “an excuse to revisit an England which never really existed in the first place” - and Foyle’s War. Horowitz recalls a childhood that sounds tailor-made for a crime writer, with a shady father whose fortune mysteriously disappeared after his death, and a domineering grandmother whose behaviour taught him that “most evil in this word is not big evil, it’s little, it’s petty”; he danced on her grave after she died. Listen here
James Ellroy (2010)
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Fans of the creepy uncle of American crime fiction, the author of LA Confidential and The Black Dahlia, will not be disappointed by the typically hammy sinisterness of Ellroy’s performance, as he explores the influence of his mother’s murder on his work (“I have the ability to exploit misfortune”) and explains how he overcame addiction to start writing (“The imminence of death … simply scared me sober. I turned almost overnight from a self-destructive buffoon to a highly disciplined, meticulous creative force.”) All his musical choices are from Beethoven and other Romantic composers: “I am the most romantic guy who’s ever lived,” he says, mind-bogglingly. Listen here
Val McDermid (2013)
Britain’s current most successful Queen of Crime reflects on what it was like to go from a working-class Scottish family to Oxford University (“everything was different, even the vegetables were different … Nobody understood a word I said”) and how she gained her reputation as the genre’s bloodthirstiest practitioner. She reflects on the different ways in which male and female crime writers approach violence: “Little girls grow up with a sense of the threat of the world ... That’s not how men grow up thinking of themselves in the world. Women have that imaginative experience of victimhood before they ever encounter it, and so we’re writing about it from the inside.” Listen here
Martina Cole (2018)
![Martina Cole in 2017](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/radio/2019/02/18/TELEMMGLPICT000132615407_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQfyf2A9a6I9YchsjMeADBa08.jpeg?imwidth=350)
The corncrake-voiced writer of violent megasellers suchs as Dangerous Lady and The Take is the subject of one of the most heart-warmingly inspirational editions of the programme ever. After describing how she was expelled from her convent school for reading Harold Robbins and subsequently worked as a cleaner, Cole reveals that she wrote Dangerous Lady in her early 20s and, after rediscovering the manuscript 10 years later, realised she had something good. “Women don’t write books like that,” declared the first literary agent she contacted; but once he had read the manuscript he immediately (and correctly) told her: “You are going to be a star.” Listen here
Ann Cleeves (2019)
The novelist whose books have inspired the television dramas Vera and Shetland talks movingly with Lauren Laverne about receiving recognition late in her career after 20 years of public indifference, and reflects on her husband’s mental illness (“There were times where he thought he was Jesus and he could cure the neighbour’s cat”) and how reading and writing helped her to cope.
She recalls her former career as a probation officer, when she learned that, “most murderers are really pathetic, inadequate little men”, and developed the fascination with fractured families that drives her fiction. Unsurprisingly, a Shetland fiddler features in her music choices. Listen here